.13747 
1877 




BY REV. -N. J. MORRISON 



^^A GREAT WORKr^ 

AN ADDRESS 

BEFORE THE STUDENTS AND OFFICERS OF DRURY COLLEGE 
AND THE CITIZENS OF SPRINGFIELD, 

ON THE OCCASION OF THE 

FOURTH ANNIVERSARY i COLLEGE, 

iJTJIsrE 21st, 1877- 



Bjr N. J. MOHRISON, D. T>/^resid8£.^ 



%^or,g :i 



PUBLISHED BY VOTE OF THE BOARD OF TRUSTEES. 



if 

SPRINGFIELD: J! ^^' 

PAT RIOT- ADVERTISER BOOK AND JOB PRINTING ESTABLISHMENT. 

1877. 



ADDRESS. 



"zZ" am doing a great work''' — Nehemiah, VI. 3. 

Nehemiah was "doing a great work." 

To rear again the broken city walls, to rehabilitate the exiled Jews 
in their ancestral homes, to re-establish the dishonored worship of 
Jehovah in its ancient seat and glory ; to raise Jerusalem from being 
"an heap" to the old dignity of capital of the chosen people of God, 
was a great work, an undertaking of the highest moral grandeur, as 
well as one involving great difficulty. 

Only a masterful faith in Almighty God could have nerved the 
Hebrew leader to undertake such a work, under such difficulties, 
and steadily to prosecute it, amid the environment of open enemies, 
the machinations of secret foes and the distrust of timid friends, 
unto the successful end. 

Nehemiah endured as seeing Him who is invisible. ' 

The Sanballats, Tobiahs and Geshems plotted against the work, 
and sent lying Gashmus to slander him to the king ; but Nehemiah 
toiled on with renewed ardor and undaunted courage till the last 
stone had been lifted to the top of the lofty walls, and the solemn 
worship, instituted by Moses, had been restored to the rebuilt temple, 
because he felt that God wrought loith him. 

The work which we have been called in the Providence of God to 
undertake in this city and during these past fbur years to prosecute, 
is also great ; and the success of it, so far as it has succeeded, and its 
expected complete success, is founded in a similar faith in the Great 
Unseen. 

Rarely does it fall to the lot of any man, or set of men, to under- 
take a task of greater difficulty than the founding of a College of 
liberal learning ; one which involves more contingencies unf orseen ; 
one which requires in the undertaker more intelHgent zeal, more 
energy and persistency in action, more breadth of view and more 
catholicity of feeling; demanding larger material resources more 
difficult to compass ; one needing a longer period for the develop- 
ment of well-considered plans; one more likely to subject under- 



BACCALAUREATE ADDKESS, 



taker and manager to more frequent misconception by the people, 
though of all men he may justly claim the consideration and sym- 
pathy of the pubHc whom he seeks to serve ; but, on the other hand, 
rarely does God call a man to a work of higher moral grandeur, that 
Hes nearer to the very heart of all that is best in our Christian civil- 
ization, or one more divinely sublime in the prospect of ever-matur- 
ing and never-ceasing good results. 

He who is engaged in such a service for Christ and Humanity 
may well magnify his office, though he keep the humihty of the true 
disciple ever in his heart. 

With my back, therefore, on all the experiences of the past four 
years in connection with the founding of Drury College, some of 
which have cut my soul to the quick — with my back on even the 
errors of the past, whatever they may have been, save as they shall 
serve as useful monitors — and with my face turned resolutely toward 
the known (and the unknown) difficulties of the near future, I yet, 
out of a full heart, thank God for the hand which led me hither ! I 
devoutly thank him for these years of ceaseless care and exacting 
toil ! For this great opportunity of doing something to enlighten 
and bless society; for the great privilege of laying deep and broad 
foundations here on which other workmen in the future shall raise a 
structure whose glory, like the morning splendor which once Hghted 
up the gilded domes and towers of the rebuilt Jerusalem, shall hence 
shine out afar ! I devoutly thank God for the success of the past, 
and take fresh courage for the future. 

I speak to you, my friends and co-laborers, on the greatness of the 
work in which we are engaged. And I shall speak with great frank- 
ness, taking you, as it were, into my confidence, and pointing out 
how you and all your fellow-citizens are interested in the develop- 
ment of this great work. 

First. The founding of a College of liberal culture is a great work 
in the results immediately sought. 

Three years ago, in my first annual address, I sought to point out 
and emphasize the chief office of the American College. 

The office of the College was then succinctly described as "the 
production of men ;" men in the high sense, possessed of thorough, 
many-sided and generous culture, in whom all the mental faculties 
are developed in symmetry, and over whose broad intelligence and 
enlightened will are shed the graces of the Christian character. 
And to-day I reaffirm this general culture to be the distinctive and 
chief office of the true College. 



BACCALAUEEATE ADDKESS. 



Special training either for the professions, or for certain scientific 
pursuits, or for the practical arts, can never generally take the place 
of this many-sided education in Colleges, without the most serious 
detriment to civilization itself. 

The man is of more value than the skilful practitioner or the clever 
artisan. Manhood, therefore, is the true aim in education, especially 
in the earlier stages. 

The specialist in science and the skilled artisan in practical me- 
chanics are important and necessary factors in the progress of 
modern civilization. 

The interests of science may require one man to devote the labor 
of life to the study and scientific description of a single family of 
beetles ; the modern principle of " division of labor" may compel 
another to give himself, body and soul, to the minute handicraft of 
polishing needles. The ever multiplying wants of civilized society 
may demand this. But if the training of men generally was to be 
confined to such narrow grooves, I should pity the third generation. 
I should pity a society composed chiefly of bent and shriveled needle- 
grinders and near-sighted professors of bugs and tadpoles. 

Moreover, if men are to be trained to the exclusive following of a 
narrow speciality in science or useful art, as many must, by all means 
let the general culture precede the special training. Train the youth 
in the generous humanities before he takes the ferrule of the school- 
master. Give the boy, who is to spend his life at the accountant's 
desk, some insight into science and literature before you doom him 
to the dwarfing drudgery of mechanically wielding the book-keeper's 
pen. If your son must spend a great part of his natural life in the 
mephitic air and darkness of the coal-mine, let him pass his boy- 
hood in the pure air and the glad sunshine of the ojDen sky. If you 
condemn him from early childhood to the darkness and the narrow 
spaces, his fate, or that of his offspring, will be like that of the eye- 
less fish of Mammoth Cave; the organ of intellectual vision will 
shrivel and perish from disuse. 

Besides, general culture of the mind is the best possible prepara- 
tion for special studies, or for particular trades. It is the experience 
of teachers of philosophy and special sciences, that those students 
sLTcceei in these specialities far better if they have had the previous 
advantage of general discipline. So culture will speed the acquisi- 
tion of any business or handicraft, as well as give the subject of it 
a broader view of the principles that lie at the basis of success in 
his chosen avocation. 

Culture "pays" in business. It will "speed the plow" and the 



BACCALAUKEATE ADDRESS. 



loom as well as the business of the advocate and the clergyman. 
Said Vanderbilt, during the last year of his life, "I am eighty-two 
years of age, but I would give a milhon dollars to enjoy the advan- 
tages of a liberal education even for six months." 

Our chief work then is securing to our students the benefits of 
general culture. To found a College in order that cultured men and 
women may be yearly sent forth hence to fill stations of responsi- 
bility and honor in all parts of this mighty West, in successive gen 
erations long after our feeble activities have been hushed in the 
grave and our names forgotten, is a great work, worthy of the as- 
piration of angels. 

But "liberal learning" in our Colleges now means far more than a 
generation ago. The narrow curriculum of study then prevalent even 
in the best American colleges suffices nowhere now. The classical 
requirements have about doubled, the modern languages have been 
added, while a whole platoon of fresh sciences has been marched 
into the undergraduate course. 

The Colleges in which Jefferson, Jay, Calhoun and Webster were 
trained for their great deeds, were about equal to respectable acad- 
emies of to-day. 

The standard of scholarship is still steadily advancing. Wheelock 
in founding Dartmonh, and Jefferson in planning the University 
of Virginia, could not have dreamed of the standard of culture which 
prevails in those distinguished schools to-day. So we who are now 
creating the characteristic culture of this young College, and feel that 
the standard is already a highly respectable one, only faintly compre- 
hend the demands which are likely to be made on our successors 
fifty years hence by the culture of that period. Civilization is human 
progress, and progress is marked by the advance of the schools in 
which men are trained. 

Hence in the expected progress of our work, in respect to the ex- 
cellence of the culture imparted here, we find a new dignity and 
grandeur. That is a high conception of one's work that its results 
shall endure; bnt that is a vastly higher thought that these results 
will constantly improve and freshen as the ages pass away. 

But the American College can no longer limit its work to teaching 
the "humanities," even when these are reenforced by the principles 
of science and something of the modern languages. 

The multifarious needs of modern society demand technical educa- 
tion, training in science as appHed to industrial and fine art; fitting 
men and women to be designers in art, and engineers, superintend- 
ents and experts in chemical, textile and metallurgic manufacture. 



BACCALAUREATE ADDRESS. 



The Centennial Exposition surprised us, and the world, with a 
new revelation — the great progress lately made by us in industrial 
art-work and the manufacture of the more delicate fabrics in metal, 
cotton, wool and silk. America is beginning to compete with Eu- 
rope on this higher grade of industry. 

But American proprietors and masters in manufactures meet with 
this obstacle in the prosecution of their manufacture; they cannot 
find in America men competent to superintend the work which they 
seek to do in their manufactories. 

Our skilled workmen are largely foreigners and, worst of all, we 
have to import the Foremen and Superintendents to guide this 
foreign help. The result already is, the filling of our industrial 
centers with a population as alien to the Spirit of our Institutions 
as their persons are foreign to our soil. And these further results 
quickly follow — labor unions, armed strikes, disturbance, wild agra- 
rian talk, rank communism ; and altogether the serious weakening of 
the foundation of our national institutions. 

Two or three of the older States, particularly New Jersey and 
Massachusetts, are seeking to supply this great want in our systems 
of education. Progress has been made in art manufacture. Do- 
mestic wall-papers are no longer rough copies of European designs. 
Our carpets after original designs vie with the best from English 
looms. Silks of finest fabric and exquisite pattern are woven at 
Paterson and South Manchester. American watches, cutlery, tools, 
certain fabrics of cotton, silver plate, and articles of household dec- 
oration, as shown at Philadelphia, compare well with those produced 
anywhere. But alas ! the high taste and skill in pattern and work- 
manship are still chiefly foreign. 

In fine art we are about equally dependent on the schools and 
models of other lands. Our art galleries are more conspicuous for 
the absence of high art than for anything else. American artists 
must still study abroad and find there also the chief remuneration 
for their skill. There is but one large city in the country which can 
claim to have an "art atmosphere," which the visitor, with percep- 
tions a little quickened by breathing the air of European capitals, 
feels as he walks the streets and sees the offered evidences around 
of cultivated public taste. 

No one will deny that excellence in both fine and industrial art is 
of great moment in the intellectual development of any people. But 
it is scarcely less important in the nation's material development and 
wealth-producing power. The production of fine porcelian, rich 
furnishings, plate and the like, may be a far better criterion of a 



BACCALAUEEATE ADDEESS. 



nation's material prosperity thaD the most abundant harvests and 
the largest returns from mining. The revenues of Paris, Vienna, 
Leipsic, Belgium and many portions of England are derived largely 
from art manufacture and art commerce. 

Now to remedy this deficiency in American Ai't Manufactui'e, and to 
create sesthetic taste among the ]3eople, we must have art education. 
Special technical and fine art schools will have to be provided probably 
at State expense. But schools of every grade, and especially colleges, 
must make such provisions as will help widely to educate the public 
taste to an appreciation of art-culture and the products of art-manu- 
facture. I believe Drury College, placed though she is within one 
hundred niiles of the western limit of civilization, has something to 
do in educating the public taste. We can teach the elements of 
aesthetics, practical as well as theoretical. We can render our Col- 
lege grounds attractive and erect such edifices for College use as ac- 
cord with good taste. It may have been necessary for Dartmouth, 
Yale and Williams in the early day to pile up brick structures that 
are relieved from utter ugliness by not a single line of beauty ; but 
I think it would be consummate folly for us in this late day to repro- 
duce here those hideous fossils in primitive architecture. "A thing 
of beauty is a joy forever," and we need an increase of this joy in 
the city of Springfield. 

It is easy to see that the successful College of our day is quite a 
different affair from the College in the time of the fathers. It was 
then a single school for a single though an high purpose. It con- 
sists now rather of a congeries of connected schools. Once the Col- 
lege was like each of the little separate work-shops that formerly 
stood by the noisy waterfalls of every New England rivulet; the 
College of to-day is like the great comjplicated manufactories into 
which the work shops have expanded, that drown the voice of the 
• waterfalls with the multitudinous whirr and rattle of machinery. 

The former Colleges trained men for three purposes only — the 
ministry, the law and medicine; and these were the "learned profes 
sions!" Now candidates for these high callings are only a small 
minority of our College graduates, and the "learned professions" 
have increased to at least a score. 

To successfully establish a College under these conditions is a 
work of far greater difficulty than that undertaken by Wheelock, 
Tennent, Humphrey, Fisk or Yale. 

Second. Not only is the College " a great work" because of the 
lonmecUate results aimed at, but still more in view of the indirect and 
more distant results reached. 



BACCALAUREATE ADDKESS 



General education flows from tlie College downward to the masses 
of tlie x^eople. The schools of the people do not create the Colleges 
for the few, but vice versa. Harvard gave to Massachusetts, and so 
to the country at large, the system of universal public education. A 
true College anywhere will create good schools throughout the com-, 
munitj^ Drury College has already caused a revolution in the char- 
acter of your city schools. Made strong by you and its friends, in 
a generation the influence going hence will have transformed the 
schools and the popular educatien of all this wide region. And this 
it will accomplish by no obtrusive interference with schools or sys- 
tems of education, but indirectly through the great number of tearch- 
ers which it will send forth, and the general elevation of the public 
sentiment respecting education. 

When the corner stone of tliis College structure was being laid, 
citizens said, "We want to make Springfield an educational and liter- 
ary centre." A noble ambition, truly.' Its full realization would 
put more money in your purses than the successful growth here of 
extensive manufactures, and bring you untold moral and intellectual 
wealth. 

But the method of making this city such a " centre" as proposed 
by some did not seem a "wise one. The educational tone, and literary 
and sesthetic atmosphere essential to the existence of such a "cen- 
ter," can be best produced in any jalace, not by multiplying weak, 
half-supj)orted schools called "Seminaries" and "Colleges," but by 
erecting one school into the broad dimensions of the true College. 
Make this College strong, capable, thoroughly equipped. Give it 
enlarged resources. Warm it with the embrace of your hearty sym- 
pathy. Speak for it. Write for it. Pray for it. 

When Drury College is made strong, other schools that will bless 
and honor your Society will spring up here around the College, co- 
operating with it in securing the end of your aspiration. 

The true College is a powerful educator of the public taste. 

For occular proof of this, visit some of the older College to\vns 
of the country, and we need not go beyond Columbia, in our own 
State, and Jacksonville, in Illinois. 

In an address before a representative body of American teachers 
assembled in Washington just before the Exposition at Philadelphia, 
the Baron Schwartz-Senborn, the Austrian minister to our Govern- 
ment, and Commissioner from Vienna to the Exposition, speaking of 
the educating influence w^hich the Exposition would have on the 
public taste of the American peo^Dle, said: "I have traveled exten- 
sively in your great country, East and West, and have seen many 



10 BACCALAUEEATE ADDEESS. 

things greatly to admire. Tour national resoui'ces are almost bonnd- 
less, and yonr progress has been wonderful. But your public taste 
is avuful!' 

This is plain speech for a foreigner, and a Minister of State at 
that! 

But unfortunately the criticism is just. For proof, look at many 
of the pretentious public buildings which disfigure so many of oui' 
large towns and cities. Consider the general character of American 
highways, when contrasted with those of any other civilized nation. 
One writer has said that the public roads of a country are a good 
criterion of the stage of advancement of the inhabitants. If our 
civilization were to be subjected to this test, we should fall behind 
even Ireland, Italy and Sj)ain. Our farm husbandry is slovenly in 
the extreme. It were often difficult to determine whether the Amer- 
ican farmer plows his land for com and wheat, or for the far more 
abundant crop of wormwood. Gaunt, girdled, decaying trees, stand- 
ing in mournful loneliness, like Niobe weeping for her slain children, 
disfigui'e our fields. We strip the soil of the native forest with a 
vehemence as if every tree were an enemy, planting none to take the 
place of those destroyed, and in consequence our climate is alter- 
nately parched and drenched, and the landscape presents to the ob- 
server no grateful relief of alternate sunlight and graceful shade. 

Then, in what houses multitudes of Americans, in town aud coun- 
try, are content to live — in structure, appointments, comfort and 
grateful aspect -scarcely superior to the lodges of the aborigines. 
Many a home, in which large famihes of children are reared, is 
destitute of every material element that can minister to the refine- 
ment of the inmates, or gladden the eye of the passer-by. 

If you travel in England, or on the Continent anywhere, you move . 
agreeably over a firm, smooth roadway, bordered by neat fences or 
hedges perpetually blooming with clambering vines ; no weeds under 
the fences or in the well-tilled fields ; the landscape gladdened with 
frequent symmetrical shade trees whose foHage is tremulous with 
the music of birds; and every 'peasant's cottage, though it be of 
thatch, is garnished with flowers and the refreshing green of well- 
trimmed turf. Even the slant sides of sandy railway "cuts" are 
carefully sodded, while the ^vindows and walls and fences of railway 
stations are adorned with vines, trained fuchsias and fragrant roses. 
Such treatment of public places alike ministers to a refined taste, 
and is an educator toward social order and public prosperity. It is 
the high office of the school and College to educate the pubHc taste, 
by correctly training generations of youth and dispersing them widely 



BACCALAUREATE ADDRESS. 11 



among the masses, and by gathering around them societies of culti 
vated men and women. 

I look upon the College, also, as an educator in the direction of a 
generous and energetic public spirit. Every well educated man feels 
that he owes much to the public; to the comfort, convenience and 
enjoyment of the masses. One is half reconciled to the feudal con- 
stitution of English society, when he sees how everything which the 
English baron possesses is held by him in trust for the public good. 
He opens his spacious and beautiful grounds to the peasant and the 
prince alike. He has a servant at the door of his palace to meet 
you, and conduct you politely throughout his residence, into his 
picture gallery, and down the lanes of his semi-tropical flower gar- 
dens and conservatory — all done on the single condition of gentle- 
manly behaviour on your part. Then he sees that the public ways 
which skirt his property are always in good order, hard, neat, a de- 
light to youi' beast that hauls you easily over the beaten track, and 
to you sitting in your own hired carriage. 

Wealth there recognizes the great fact that it oioes something to 
the piihlic. 

When will the wealth of America, so rapidly acquired and so widely 
diffused, when will it learn that it owes good roads, good sidewalks, 
and public buildings not offensive to good taste, to the community? 
When the wealthy men have been educated to a proper appreciation 
of these things for themselves, and of their influence on public order 
and morality. 

And the American College should be an educator also in the direc- 
tion of an intelligent and broad national patriotism. 

The time has now passed to give any place in our public affairs, in 
society, in literature, in our schools, in oiu' hearts, to any spirit of 
sectionalism. 

The opposing forces in our civilization have at last met in hostile 
array; with the smoke and roar of battle, with the terrible carnage 
and sorrow of the four bloody years, let the animosities enkindled 
therein also pass away ; let the memory of alienation be bmied in 
the same grave in which the heroes of both parties to the fratricidal 
strife now peacefully sleep. Let us now wake up anew the old 
patriotic pride. Let us rouse the spirit of a renewed nationalism — 
a nationalism broader and purer than the old — in which there shall 
be indeed "no North, no South, no East, no West," but our country, 
our whole country, everywhere. 

I subscribe to the sentiments lately expressed by the editor of the 
Louisville Courier-Journal, at the decoration of the graves of Union 



12 BACCALAUEEATE ADDRESS. 



soldiers at Nashyille — "To sectionalism and partyism we ewe cm- 
undoing ; we shall owe our restoration to nationalism alone. The 
man who was a Confederate, and is a nationalist, must feel when 
treading the floor of Fanueil Hall, at home." I will add, and the 
Union soldier must feel, while standing beside Washington's tomb 
in Virginia, while sitting under the magnolia shades of Charleston, 
or ^dsiting the sugar plantations of Louisiana, that he is also at 
home. 

Not long since I stood under the dome of the Massachusetts State 
House in Boston. Behind me, in front of the entrance, was the 
statue of Webster, his grand face turned toward the great city at 
his feet, whose public interests he had so long and faithfully served. 
Around me, compassing the rotunda, were the statues and busts of 
the illustrious dead of the Old Commonwealth, as Hancock, Frank- 
lin, Otis, Adams, Andrew, Sumner, and the rest. This is, I thought, 
Massachusetts' Pantheon. Here are the shrines of her heroes and 
sages. But in front of me, in the place of greatest honor, on the 
highest pedestal, where the light that streamed from above should 
most clearly delineate the well-known features, stood Greenough's 
famous statue of Washington. 

Below the statue, in the marble floor, rested two freestone burial 
slabs. On them were inscribed the names of the Enghsh ancestors 
of the Father of his Country. On a tablet hanging near I read these 
words : " These fac-similes of the memorial stones of the Washington 
Family in the Parish Church of Brington, the burial place of the 
Silencers, near Althorp, Northamptonshire, England, were presented 
by the Et. Hon. Earl of Spencer to Charles Sumner, of Mass., and 
by him offered to the Commonwealth of Mass., 22d Feb., 1861." 

So beautiful an act, coming at that great crisis in our national 
history, taken in connection with one of the latest acts of the Senator's 
long public life, in proposing that all memorials of the late civil strife 
should be obliterated from the national escutcheon in order that 
future Americans might have nothing to remind them that brothers 
had ever been estranged, shows the breadth of Mr. Sumner's patri- 
otism. 

This act also points forward to the time coming when the effigies 
of great Americans of all " sections" and of all the States shall stand 
together in the local as well as the national pantheons ; and when 
the statesmanship, or great deeds in war, which shall constitute a 
man's claim to this high popular distinction, shall be honored chiefly 
in that the great achievements were done for the whole country. 

What boots it that I was born and reared amid the granite crags 



BACCALAUEEATE ADDEESS. ' 13 



of New Hampshire, or you in the State of Jefferson, or you under 
the Palmetto groves of Carolina, or you in this vast Empire State in 
the heart of the Union? Nothing, absolutely nothing. The bless- 
ings we have enjoyed have been national; the ills we have suffered 
have come from sectional jealousies and discord. 

And this spirit of a revived and broad national patriotism should 
be cultivated in all the schools. Let the youth of all portions of the 
land commingle in the same schools, and be taught from the same 
text books. Let the school histories of our country be truthful, but 
embody neither statement, nor illustration, that can only wound sen- 
sibilities that are simply human, and written from the standpoint of 
a broad and impartial nationalism. Above all, let us not repeat the 
measureless and mischievous folly of making school books for locah- 
ties and sections. Tt will be a crime against our children to rear 
them in the prejudices and animosities engendered in us by civil 
strife. And so one purpose of this young school is to cultivate and ex- 
tend the spirit of a revived and broadened patriotism. It is in the 
right place for this ; where the two red seas of blood and passion 
met and commingled ; in the heart of a community gathered from 
all " sections" and parts of our wide territory, and among a people 
who respect each others' honest differences in opinion. 

This fact that Drury College is likely to prove an important 
factor toward the great end of a perfect reconciliation in a restored 
Union, is a main argument in pressing the claims of the College on 
the sj^npathy of philanthropists and Christian patriots. 

And this young school, local at present in patronage and influence, 
is designed in the conception of those who ministered at its birth, 
and destined in the good Providence of God, I believe, to fill a wide 
field. In its steady growth it shall lay under contribution for pa- 
tronage, broad territories outside of the district called Southwest Mis- 
souri, bringing hither the sons and daughters of Kansas, Illinois, the 
Indian Territory, Texas and the South, and distributing widely in 
return the healthful influences of refinement and culture. 

In this concej)tion, not visionary, but possible and practicable, if 
we are true to our mission, how great is the meaning of our great 
work! How this thought should subdue personal and local jeal- 
ousies, and blend all the intelligent men and women of this beauti- 
ful City of the Ozarks in enthusiastic support of the College. 

To secure the needed material resources for the achievement of 
the results indicated is "a great work." 

A few thousands will suffice for a good school, but hundreds of 
thousands are required to establish a College. 



14 BACCALAUREATE ADDRESS. 

Mr. Vanderbilt asked Bishop McTyere how much money he need- 
ed for Ms proposed College at Nashville. "From thirty to fifty 
thousand dollars," was the modest reply. " Go home," said the sage 
old man, "make yonr plans, and di-aw on me for half a miUion." 
And the great manager of fleets and railways was right, if the Bishop 
sought at once a strong College. 

Many millions have already been concentrated on such a school as 
Harvard or Tale ; yet these vast sums are small when compared with 
the aggi-egated resources to be represented at Cambridge and New 
Haven long before these first of American Universities reach the age 
of the English Cambridge and Oxford. Even here, in the case of 
our child-college, not less than an hundred thousand have been 
already expended, and only a beginning is made. 

You can readily conceive how great a revenue must come here and 
be expended on these grounds, in buildings, apparatus, cabinets, and 
especially in solid endowments for the support of a body of learned 
instructors, if the ideal which has been set before you is to be reached. 
Possibly, also, you can conceive of the outlay of labor which secur- 
ing the needed resources will cost. 

In the achievement of such a work as ours, the element of time is 
a very important factor. Forty and six years was this temple in 
building, said the Jews. The building of a College is a greater 
work than the erection of a temple, and its full development may 
requke more than two score and six years. A true College is a 
growth ; the scholastic atmosphere, the traditions, the fame of dis- 
tinguished alumni, which are so precious in the old Universities of 
Europe and in some of the older ones in America, are the fragrant 
and mellow fruitage that comes only with age and matuiity. Large 
endowments and the attendance of crowds of students hasten the ma- 
turity of a College, undoubtedly, yet certain advantages come only 
with age. 

Moreover, the greatness of our work is best seen through the 
light of its permanence. Most of the work done by human hands 
is ephemeral. We carve farms out of the wilderness, and a few 
years' neglect and the wilderness has returned. You build houses, 
and the breath of flame passes over them and they have vanished. 
You toil for a Hfetime and amass a fortune, but before a generation 
from your death, spendthrift heirs have scattered it to the four 
winds. You devote yourself with an all-absorbing passion to schemes 
of ambition, attain to some honor, imagine yourself to be great in 
your town, or State, or possibly the nation. You die, and all your 
schemes, all your success and all your greatness perish with you. 



BACCALAUREATE ADDRESS. 15 

Your very name passes from human memory like an exhalation. 
"Only institutions are immortal." And few institutions devised by 
mortal wisdom have more elements of immortality than schools of 
learning. Wisely founded they live on in their material form through 
many passing generations of men, ever fresh and vigorous, bearing 
fruit in every season, and growing better as well as venerable with 
the years. But in this spiritual life and influence they live on ever 
and forever. When will the intellectual and moral influences, that 
in school and College, fashioned the minds of Jefferson, Madison, 
Jay, Hamilton and Adams, have spent their power ! Not till these 
political institutions, and with them civilization itself, shall have 
taken their flight from our shores. 

There is to me something inspiring, solemnly inspiring, in the 
work that we are here doing, though much of it seems but rough 
pioneer work. We are not laboring for naught. Our work will not 
perish. It will stand. The workmen lay aside their tools and hie 
away when night comes ; but the completed work at whose founda- 
tion they have toiled abides still. The intellectual forces which we 
here concentrate and put in motion live on and on. 

Ours is a great work. It is divine : it deals with truth and it is eter- 
nal. If such a work as is here outlined is really going forward in your 
midst, what ought to be the attitude of all the intelligent people of 
this city and the region around, toward Drury College ? To ask the 
question is to have answered it. For surely you are awake to your 
own highest interests. No other single interest can possibly affect 
you as does this. None offers to you such blessings, blessings with- 
out drawback, gold without alloy ; advantages which touch with favor 
all men of every class in the whole community; whose prosperity 
puts additional value to every legitimate business, to every trade, to 
every warehouse, and to every acre of real estate within the limits 
of the community. 

And in urging the greatness and the value to Springfield of Drury 
College, as I have done, I beg not to be misunderstood. Those par- 
ticularly instrumental in the founding and the conduct of this work 
do not feel that thereby they are placing their fellow citizens under 
personal obligation to themselves ; nor that such benefits as are wont 
to be conferred by a Christian College are especially needed here as 
compared with other places; nor that they themselves enjoy any 
special prerogative of public censorship. I have hinted at some of 
the advantages which the College will confer, dra\ving my conclusions 
from the observed effects of such schools on other communities. 
With you I only seek the highest welfare of the whole community 
with whom, if it please God, I will pass the rest of my days. 



16 BACCALAUEEATE ADDEESS. 



Speaking, then, on the eYening of Sunday, preaching a " sermon," 
I have as yet uttered hardly a word distinctively religious. And 
yet is the Gospel of Jesus Chi'ist here in its fulness. "I am the 
light of the world ;" and here, in the main purpose and work of this 
College founding, are light and the fountain of light. Sere is Christ 
in Charity. What nobler exhibition of the Charity of the Gospel 
than in providing that here on this mountain top, the miracle of the 
loaves may be re-enacted, throughout the ages, in the presence of 
the hungry multitude ? And here, also, is Christ in Sacrifice. The 
resources which are expended in rearing College edifices and sus- 
taining needed instructors, are not the careless gift of an overflow- 
ing opulence, but the Christian offering of personal sacrifice. And 
the toil which secures these resources, and that administers these 
affairs, is not the sordid pm^chase of gold, but a generous offering 
on the altar of the public good. 

Here is Faith — that which endures as seeing Him who is invisible ; 
a faith that compasses the end from the beginning ; that staggers 
not at obstacles through unbelief; that waits for results, because it 
is anchored by the Hope that reaches within the veil. 

And here is Christian nurture, the disciplining of the wayward 
faculties of the mind; the chastening and sweetening of human 
character ; the moulding of human society after the model set for 
us in God's Holy Word. 

So, also, here is Christian immortality and eternal life ; symbolized 
in the steady progress of the school from generation to generation, 
and the perpetually freshening stream of holy influences that shall 
flow hence forever. All that is^now here, and all that shall hereafter 
concentrate here in Drury College, exists because the soul is immortal. 
We work here on imperishable material. We are fashioning Spirit. 
We seek that orur Sj)iritual handiwork may be accepted of God in 
His Great Day. 

This discourse, then, at least the subject of it, may well minister 
unto you all in the name of religion and the sweet influences of 
worship. Here work is worship. Certainly Drury College has no 
office to perform if it be not to preach Christ and him crucified. 

But this is scarcely a Baccalaureate Discoui'se, save that it is 
spoken in the presence of two young persons who in the coming 
week will complete their course of study in connection with the Col- 
lege and receive the Bachelor's Degree. To them I have little specific 
counsel to offer. They already know something of the seriousness of 
the life at the threshold of which they now stand. Their characters 
have been chastened by trial as well as by study and the discipline 
of the school. Above all they have learned to have faith in Him who 
is able to keex^ His own unto the final day. 

I congratulate you on your honorable record as students. The 
same fidelity to dut}^ in the future will give you success in the whole 
labor and warfare of life. Officers, teachers and fellow students will 
miss you, but we shall believe that the chords of fiiendship knit be- 
tween us in the College will continue to vibrate, however wide may 
be our separation. May the blessing of Almighty God be upon you 
now and unto eternal life. 



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